Presentation Pet Peeves

[Neil Jones]

The way that certain music channels insist on cropping old 4:3 videos to fit 16:9. This combined with the sub-SD picture quality and excessive use of mostly unnecessary onscreen clutter makes for a frustrating experience.

Those awful 'Our Time' sponsorship bumpers that have infested the likes of GOLD and Drama.

Happens alot on of other channels too, older versions of shows such as Family Guy and The Simpsons which are automatically stretched on SD versions of the channels.

Of course if people set their TVs up properly in the first place (and broadcasters air SD material correctly, ie in 4:3) the whole stretchyvision problem/thing takes care of itself.

[NorthTonight]

Referencing listening to BBC local radio for updates when it doesn’t really exist in the nations.

[JAS84]

"Plastering" older production/network logos with either the current logo (sometimes not matching with the original aspect ratio), or if the original company no longer exists, inserting the logo of the company who now owns the property rights. :|

I prefer when the original credits are left intact as it reflects the era of the time of when the program originally aired. It's also somewhat comforting. Logo preservation becomes difficult because of this practice.

Yeah, in the case of adding logos of new owners, that should be appended to the end, not overlaid. So, you might see a modern Fremantle Media endcap after an old Grundy one, for example.

[Skid]

When there is a lack of any announcement about changes to the schedule when live programmes are overrunning

Like on BBC Four during the World Snooker recently, there wasn't even any on screen message to say what the revised schedule would look like.

[James2001]

The way that certain music channels insist on cropping old 4:3 videos to fit 16:9. This combined with the sub-SD picture quality and excessive use of mostly unnecessary onscreen clutter makes for a frustrating experience.

Those awful 'Our Time' sponsorship bumpers that have infested the likes of GOLD and Drama.

Happens alot on of other channels too, older versions of shows such as Family Guy and The Simpsons which are automatically stretched on SD versions of the channels.

They're only stretched on those channels if your TV/set top box is set up wrong. Or you're using Sky Q, as for some reason that doesn't offer any option to show 4:3 SD content properly.

Every other digital box I've come across has some way of watching 4:3 content properly (though even the bog standard Sky HD box only does it if you set the box to "auto", so you have to wait several seconds for the box and TV to switch resolution when changing between SD and HD channels, it won't pillarbox and upscale like most digital boxes do).

The way music videos are handled does frustrate me though, in my opinion 4:3 should be treated as 4:3 even when it's a video with a faux-letterbox effect, even if it does leave the picture floating in the middle of the screen. After all, the letterboxing was an intentional part of the video, so should be left as-is. There's plenty of videos which play with the letterboxing one way or another as well, which is lost when it's zoomed in to. Even most places which treat full screen 4:3 music videos properly (like official YouTube channels) tend to crop letterboxed ones. I think the BBC4 TOTP repeats are the only place on British TV left to see music videos unadulterated in aspect ratio terms. Vintage TV used to for the most part, even with most faux-letterbox videos (though they did tend to filmise them instead, which was obvious with the amount of older music videos either shot on video or at least using 50/60i video effects- the Now channels are guilty of this too along with the cropping), though that channel's long gone.

[Brekkie]

When there is a lack of any announcement about changes to the schedule when live programmes are overrunning

Like on BBC Four during the World Snooker recently, there wasn't even any on screen message to say what the revised schedule would look like.

On a similar theme schedules under running, so if you tune in at the scheduled time you've missed the start of what you planned to watch, or even the entire show.

The BBC are the worst offenders for this if a show gets replace in the post-news slot - never understood why if one show gets pulled from the schedule it's that difficult to replace it with a show of equal duration.


And talking of late night schedules it's always annoyed me how they couldn't schedule BBC1 to hit the hour or half hour with their finish time to join the news channel, especially in the days when they ended with a movie most nights (not so much the case anymore) so would have films of varying length as an option to them.

[Vanilla Vip3r]

Another pet peeve of mine is excessive promotion of programming.

A good example of this was with the new series of Meet The Richardson's on Dave earlier this year. At the beginning and end of almost every single break in every programme they would play a trailer for the show. This would then be followed by another promotion read out by the CA over a promo slide. Next they plaster a promotional 'New & exclusive: Meet The Richardson's. Tonight 10pm' DOG in the top right corner. Finally, as whatever programme was finishing, the CA would once again remind us that Meet The Richardson's was on at 10pm, followed by yet another trailer. Repeat ad-nauseum.

I've never actually watched Meet The Richardson's. Mainly because I got so fed up of Dave banging on and on about it that it put me off.

[dbl]

Dave has a problem with people still thinking it's all about repeats, so the fact you're posting this shows that strategy worked. It's a launch and the idea behind that is that you can't miss it. Different audiences flow into the channel for certain shows and don't forget people have DVRs so as much messaging as possible to catch them. As they don't typically watch the channel for hours on end.

[VMPhil]

Dave has a problem with people still thinking it's all about repeats, so the fact you're posting this shows that strategy worked. It's a launch and the idea behind that is that you can't miss it. Different audiences flow into the channel for certain shows and don't forget people have DVRs so as much messaging as possible to catch them. As they don't typically watch the channel for hours on end.

Erm... but if the marketing is so annoying that it's turning people off from watching the channel entirely, I wouldn't say it has 100% worked.

At least they were watching the repeats beforehand. Now they're not watching anything!

[all new Phil]

But you know about the programme, yeah?

[dbl]

Dave has a problem with people still thinking it's all about repeats, so the fact you're posting this shows that strategy worked. It's a launch and the idea behind that is that you can't miss it. Different audiences flow into the channel for certain shows and don't forget people have DVRs so as much messaging as possible to catch them. As they don't typically watch the channel for hours on end.

Erm... but if the marketing is so annoying that it's turning people off from watching the channel entirely, I wouldn't say it has 100% worked.

At least they were watching the repeats beforehand. Now they're not watching anything!

Ratings say otherwise. Things can be tweaked I agree but just giving you an idea what the thinking behind it is

[CameronYoung]

Dave has a problem with people still thinking it's all about repeats, so the fact you're posting this shows that strategy worked. It's a launch and the idea behind that is that you can't miss it. Different audiences flow into the channel for certain shows and don't forget people have DVRs so as much messaging as possible to catch them. As they don't typically watch the channel for hours on end.

Erm... but if the marketing is so annoying that it's turning people off from watching the channel entirely, I wouldn't say it has 100% worked.

At least they were watching the repeats beforehand. Now they're not watching anything!

Who said anything about switching off Dave entirely?

[VMPhil]

Dave has a problem with people still thinking it's all about repeats, so the fact you're posting this shows that strategy worked. It's a launch and the idea behind that is that you can't miss it. Different audiences flow into the channel for certain shows and don't forget people have DVRs so as much messaging as possible to catch them. As they don't typically watch the channel for hours on end.

Erm... but if the marketing is so annoying that it's turning people off from watching the channel entirely, I wouldn't say it has 100% worked.

At least they were watching the repeats beforehand. Now they're not watching anything!

Who said anything about switching off Dave entirely?

No, you're right. Vanilla Vip3r just said he'd never watched the show because of it, I was conflating that with my own experience of another channel advertising something so often that I stopped watching the channel entirely for a long time.

[L1]

One pet peeve I noticed recently on ITV Nightscreen of all places was listing Saturday's regional news as 'Local Programming'. Why not just put regional news??

[FanOfTV99]

One pet peeve I noticed recently on ITV Nightscreen of all places was listing Saturday's regional news as 'Local Programming'. Why not just put regional news??

Speaking of ITV Nightscreen. They've never bothered updating the design which was made in 2005. They do update it every now and then but it's the same design for the last 16 years. I honestly think they need a revamp like as soon as possible.